Crowned to rule for a year. Condemned to fall for a crime she didn't commit. In Tlocc Kown, every year begins with a girl chosen to rule and ends with her falling from the Timekeeper. The country calls it tradition. Seventeen-year-old Amorae Creaker calls it murder. When the newly chosen Matriarch dies after eating a cookie from Amorae's family stall, Amorae runs. She is caught, tried, and handed a sentence designed to look like mercy: one year on the throne, then the fall. A crown with no power. A death with a date on it. Assigned to her case is Ignace, the young Chief of the Defenders, who wants her guilty and wants it fast. But the evidence keeps refusing to cooperate. A hidden room behind a fortress wall. A vial of poison ordered by someone who should have had no use for it. Letters signed by the Timekeeper itself. Someone has been staging these sacrifices for forty years, and that someone is still inside the Fortress, walking its halls beside her. With the clock running down to her Last Appearance, Amorae has one year to name the person who framed her, or become the next name her country is taught to forget.